


Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt

by bluejbird



Series: Interconnected [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 08:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8743060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluejbird/pseuds/bluejbird
Summary: Everyone thinks having a soulmate is a gift, but Jim knows better. So far experiencing his soulmate's pain has gotten him fired, dumped, and borderline alcoholism. Or, the one where soulmates feel each other's pain- both physical and emotional.





	

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to Kurt Vonnegut for the title.

No one needs to tell Jim Kirk that the universe can be a cruel and twisted place. He doesn’t subscribe to any of the old religions that were so common centuries earlier, but sometimes he likes to think there’s some higher power out there with a terrible sense of humour. Because maybe one day he’ll meet that entity and get to punch them in the face. 

Jim’s life reads like a laundry list of shitty situations. A father who died the moment he was born. A mother whose pain was so great she couldn’t bear to  look at him. An uncle who used his fists and his words to beat him down. The whole shitshow that was Tarsus IV. A brother who left home the moment he could, leaving Jim well and truly alone. And anyone who argues Jim hasn’t drawn the shortest of straws in life gets to experience the frustration and fury first hand. 

Plus, just to add the shitty icing on the cake, Jim’s been blessed with a soulmate. 

That’s how everyone else speaks about it. Like soulmates are a blessing. Like Jim is lucky to have one, when so many people on the planet don’t. 

Jim isn’t exactly convinced. He thinks it’s pretty terrible, actually, that he’s destined for this one person who he bets will be over the moon to find out that their soulmate is Kelvin Baby and General Fuck Up Jim Kirk. He doesn’t like that no matter what he does, he’s tied to this one person for the rest of his life, and they’re tied to him, and will probably want to love him and rely on him and trust him. 

And that’s not what Jim is all about. Jim doesn’t like being tied down. He wants to run and fly and be free, and to live his life however he wants. Not how some soulmate will want. 

Besides, he’s seen that having a soulmate can fuck up your life. He’s heard from his brother and his uncle and his grandparents how much his mom had fallen apart after his dad died. How the wounds caused by the pain had never healed and probably never would. 

Because that’s the sickening twist of it all. If you’re lucky enough to have a soulmate, you’re lucky enough to experience their pain. 

Jim doesn’t understand it one bit. All around him, people talk about soulmates like it’s an honour to share their pain. Jim thinks it’s pretty fucking awful. He has enough pain of his own, without having to take on someone else’s, too. But everyone talks about sharing the load, helping each other through it, lessening the damage, both to the body and to the mind. 

You feel their physical pain, and they feel yours. And you share emotional pain, too. Which is just awesome. Their wounds become your wounds, and sure, it prevents people from getting as seriously hurt – a broken bone of someone without a soulmate will take twice as long to heal, a cut will  be twice as deep – but it also means you get their emotional baggage. Well,  you get the pain at least, but without the understanding of what’s causing it. Which is really, really frustrating. 

Normally, this all kicks in during puberty. For Jim it’s a little later, probably thanks to the effects long-term starvation can have on your body. So he’s fifteen, minding his own business, lying around reading a book, when his big toe starts throbbing like he’s tried to kick the shit out of a brick without any shoes on. 

“Dammit!” he yells, but there’s no one around to hear him. Jim pretty much fends for himself at this point. Sam is eighteen and a million miles away on another planet. Winona is god knows where. And Frank is busy drinking himself into what Jim hopes is an early death. 

The pain from his toe ebbs away pretty quickly, and he doesn’t think anything more of it. 

A few days later, he wakes up with his trapezius muscles completely locked, and he can hardly get out of bed. It takes a long hot shower and plenty of swearing until he can get dressed and head to school. 

When he gets there, he seeks out Mandy, the girl he’s been dating, if dating is the way of describing screwing around in the backseat of her dad’s car and occasionally acknowledging her in the hallways. 

She looks at him like he’s insane when he asks her if she’s had similar injuries, and Jim can’t help but feel relief. Because it’s becoming worryingly clear that the pain he’s feeling isn’t his own. And that can only mean one thing.

One of his friends overhears and starts congratulating him, and hearing other people say it out loud tells Jim that his suspicions are probably right – he’s just earned himself a soulmate. 

For a couple of weeks he wonders who it is, but there are no more injuries. And despite his reservations, he can’t help but be curious. A friend gets the bright idea of finding out when everyone’s in the same place. So they wait until they’ve been called to an assembly, and then someone punches Jim in the face, hard enough that his nose gives a sickening pop. 

He swears loud enough to get everyone’s attention, including the principal who gives him a week’s worth of detentions. But no one else looks like they’re in pain, and no one else walks around with a broken nose for a week. And since Jim doesn’t know anyone else, he resolves not to think about his soulmate too much for now. He focuses on school, even though it bores him to tears and he gets sick of being yelled at for reading ahead.

Eventually he gets bored enough that he drops out, and there’s no one around to stop him. Jim wonders briefly if that will bother his soulmate, and finds he doesn’t particularly care. 

He gets a job in a repair shop, because he likes working with his hands, likes having something to do. He makes enough to get by, and enough to restore a shitty old bike into something sleek and beautiful. Jim dates beautiful men and women, and not so beautiful ones. He drinks enough to kill the boredom, but not enough that he’ll ever panic without it. It’s a nice, boring existence, and if it’s not the one his parents had dreamed for him, or the one he’d allowed himself to dream occasionally for himself, amidst all the crap of his childhood, then that’s just something he has to accept. 

Time passes, as it does. And apart from the occasional headache or muscle spasm or cut or bruise that Jim can’t account for personally, he doesn’t give much thought to his soulmate. He just kind of assumes they’ll show up when they show up, and it’s not like he can seek them out now and ask them to be a bit less clumsy, thanks very much. 

Then, when he’s twenty, something terrible happens. He doesn’t know what it is, and that frustrates Jim, because he’s the kind of guy that if there’s a problem, you have a handful of options – you face it and fix it, you face it and fight it until you fuck it up even further, or you walk away and bury it down deep inside and pretend it never happened. But if he doesn’t know what the problem is, those options are pointless. 

And he doesn’t know, because it’s happening to his soulmate. Some stranger out there in the big wide world who is inexplicably linked to him. 

It starts with a dull ache that Jim can’t properly isolate. He tries taking painkillers, but they don’t touch it. For a few days, he thinks that maybe it’s his heart, that it’s giving out, that there’s a problem there. He even drags himself to a doctor, which is one of his least favourite places to be. He hates doctors, hates the medicinal sterile smell of them, hates their soft bedside manner where they say shit like “it’s going to be okay” when they can’t possibly know if that’s true, hates the fact that they can treat you but the moment they turn away you’re out of their mind forever. 

Still, he goes and they do tests, and the best thing the doctor can offer him is some antidepressants. Which Jim accepts, but doesn’t take. He’s had them plied on him before, after Tarsus, and all it did was make him feel out of control, like someone else was tugging on his strings. 

So he just tries to live with the pain, and sometimes it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes the pain is distracting enough that he forgets to eat, or can’t sleep. And it takes a toll on him that makes him want to hate his soulmate, but he can’t help but worry about this person he’s never met, who he’s connected to. The pain he feels can be debilitating, so whatever it is must be terrible and Jim is no stranger to awful gut-twisting  pain himself. For the first time, he pities people without soulmates, imagining what it would be like to have the pain twofold. He’s felt something close, after Tarsus, when he was full of self-loathing and survivor’s guilt and despair. Having someone to shoulder some of the pain would have been a blessed relief. 

He gets to experience the all encompassing pain a day or so later. The pain rips through his body suddenly, to the point where he collapses to his knees. He’s at work, but there’s no one else around, and Jim wonders if this is what dying feels like. He wonders whether he’s going to die here on the floor in front of disassembled computers, all alone. 

It feels like someone has shoved something red hot into his heart, and then just as suddenly that pain disappears and is replaced with an emptiness that sends out ripples of hurt through his body. His skin hurts. His muscles hurt. His bones hurt.

It feels like forever before he can move again, and he doesn’t know if that’s because the pain has lessened, or his body has adapted to it. But as soon as he’s able, he signs out of work and goes home. He lies on his bed and feels miserable, until he remembers there’s a bottle of vodka in his freezer, so he drinks it until he can’t feel his face or the edges of the pain. 

Jim spends three days in bed, the pain pinning him in place except when he needs to pour more alcohol down his throat. 

On the fourth day, he wakes up and it’s not quite so bad. He has a hangover, but at least that’s self induced, so he can hardly complain. But when he drags himself into work, he finds he doesn’t have a job anymore. He argues and begs and eventually punches the wall beside his boss's head and storms out. 

The pain in his knuckles is a pleasant relief from the pain inside him. That pain is a dull, constant presence, but this pain is sharp and immediate. Jim can see what caused it. He can understand it, and it makes it easier to accept. 

He can’t help a smug sense of satisfaction though, knowing that his soulmate must feel this too, maybe even has split knuckles just like he does. He knows he shouldn’t blame his soulmate, but that all encompassing pain was too much, too unfair to place on him. He’s had plenty of shit in his life, and none of it has ever held him down like that. So to be knocked over by someone else’s pain seems wrong. Unjust. 

That night, he’s lying in bed when his cheek stings suddenly. He falls out of bed and goes to the bathroom, seeing the handprint bloom red on his skin before fading away, but the ringing feeling remains for hours afterwards. 

That’s the point where Jim throws his hands up in the air and decides he’s not willing to deal with whatever’s going on, and heads out to a bar. 

He gets as drunk as he can allow himself, now that he doesn’t have a job bringing in the credits. And maybe he makes some bad decisions, hits on the wrong person, tells someone else to do something anatomically impossible. And maybe he deserves the black eye he goes home with. 

His soulmate doesn’t deserve that though, and so Jim feels a little bit guilty when he goes to sleep. He’s kicking his soulmate when they’re down, when something horrific and tragic is happening to them, and he vows not to do it again. 

But the next day when he wakes up that deep, inner pain is back and Jim needs a distraction. And his resolution goes straight out the window.

It becomes habit. He finds a new job, and it pays enough to support his new hobby of trying to drown the pain with fucking and fighting even more than usual. He doesn’t always come home injured, but he’s no stranger to it either. 

And the months pass. It gets to the point where Jim is surprised when he wakes up one mid-afternoon, with a mouth that tastes like old socks and a pounding head, and realises that the pain is barely there anymore. It’s such a low hum that he hardly notices it, and he wonders how long it’s been that way. 

With the pain gone, it’s easier to settle down. To focus on work, and not getting drunk every night, and he even starts a relationship with a girl who is sweet and lovely and definitely not his soulmate. Emma seems to like Jim a lot, although Jim can’t understand why, and she even takes him home to meet her family. They talk about moving in together, and Jim knows that Emma sees wedding bells and babies in their future, and he wishes he could see that too. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t love her, although he says he does, because he doesn’t know what else to say when she confesses her feelings for him first. 

And it’s not that Jim is holding out hope for this soulmate of his. Not at all. It’s just that he doesn’t think he really wants that life. Love. A family. A future with meaning. 

But he lets himself get swept up in it all. Allows himself to feel safe and secure and maybe, sometimes, even comfortable with it. 

Which is a big mistake. Because that possibly imaginary entity, somewhere in that cruel, twisted universe, is just biding its time, waiting to break him again. 

He’s at one of Emma’s family picnics – which is something he still struggles to wrap his head around, a family who wants to spend time together, who choose to stay close and connected – when it feels like someone has sliced open his belly and tugged out his intestines. He rushes to the nearest garbage can and unloads all of the once-delicious food he’s just eaten. 

Emma is at his side, asking if he’s okay, offering to take him home, and Jim feels dizzy with pain that he can’t place, and he knows it must be his soulmate. Again. 

He manages to mumble something about food poisoning and spends the afternoon in bed while Emma brings him flat sodas and smoothes his hair from his forehead, both of which help with the nausea, but neither of which help with the all too familiar dull ache that settles in his chest. 

Two days later, the pain throbs stronger, and a week after that, Jim feels his heart shatter. 

He climbs back into bed and clutches his pillow and cries. He knows Emma is staring at him, baffled, but he doesn’t know how to explain it. He feels like his life is over, like there’s no future, only the ebb and flow of the pain inside him. 

When she asks him what’s wrong, he just shakes his head, and she’s a better person than Jim because she doesn’t press, just sits and makes soothing noises. 

And after a few days, when Jim can bring himself to get out of bed, she sits a cup of coffee in front of him and gives him a serious look. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you have a soulmate?” she asks, and Jim doesn’t know how to answer that. 

“How did you know?” he asks instead, and she looks away. 

“I recognise a broken heart when I see one.” There’s a pained look on her face, that looks like Jim feels, and his mouth moves to say words that won’t come out. 

She leaves that afternoon and never comes back, and the last thing they say to each other is sorry. 

Which is an accurate reflection of how Jim feels. He feels sorry. Sorry for his soulmate, and sorry for Emma, and sorry for himself, and sorry for whoever ends up crossing his path. 

It’s far too easy to fall back into the pattern of drinking, fighting, fucking. When he punches people, he wonders if they have soulmates who can feel it, and finds he doesn’t particularly care. He misses Emma, even though he never loved her. He misses what her existence implied about him – that he was worth something to someone else. 

He finds himself in Riverside, and there’s a hot girl and some smug looking idiots in red uniforms and Jim takes a few hard hits that he knows will have left his soulmate reeling before Pike shows up, and off he goes to Starfleet. A new man. A new challenge. A new distraction from the pain. 

~~~ 

Cadet reds look good on Jim. And the Academy turns out to be better than he could have hoped. Whatever else anyone thinks of Jim, or what he thinks of himself, there’s a constant – when he decides to do something, he does it wholeheartedly and to the best of his ability. 

He enjoys his classes. He enjoys learning, in a way he never had at school. There’s a challenge to it now, tactics to consider, rules with actual meaning to learn. 

And he enjoys the people. Sure, there are the assholes who think he doesn’t deserve to be there, who hate his smart brain and even smarter mouth and attempt to put him in his place every so often. But there are good people too. Ones that Jim can enjoy a good old fashioned roll in the hay with. Ones that Jim can discuss warp core schematics and intergalactic treaties and theoretical physics with. And ones that Jim can be himself with. 

Well. Maybe just one in that last category. Which is better than he’s ever had before. 

That Jim and Bones are friends makes sense to Jim. They’ve both got a lot of pain in them, but while Jim wears his on the surface, where the cuts and bruises show, Bones keeps his tucked away inside. Jim is all wild ideas and schemes, and Bones is cool practicality, tempered by a bleeding heart that he pretends he doesn’t have. Jim is run-on sentences, and Bones is terse one word answers. 

He’s not sure that Bones necessarily thinks it makes sense, but Jim’s confident enough in their friendship for the both of them. By halfway through their first year, Jim has already decided that he’s going to captain a starship one day, and Bones is going to be his CMO. He pointedly ignores all of Bones’s protestations about how dangerous space is, how he’ll never set foot on a ship except under extreme duress, how Jim’s probably going to get expelled long before graduation anyway. Instead he nudges him to take pilot lessons, to go on the wilderness survival elective, to be a little bit bolder and braver. 

He doesn’t know why, but he feels like he owes Bones something. Maybe it’s the fact that when he sat down next to Jim on the shuttle, he didn’t write him off. After they get the pleasantries out of the way – as much as talking about bitch ex-wives can be considered a pleasantry, anyway – Bones had peered at Jim’s wounds, fished a dermal regenerator out of his pocket, and fixed him up within half an hour. Jim didn’t even know that was possible, and when he’d tried to thank him, Bones had just shrugged, like it was a completely normal thing to do. 

It’s the only reason why Jim doesn’t look like a complete delinquent in his admission photo. 

So he repays Bones by coaxing him out of the hard shell he’s woven around himself. There’s a lot of damage, somewhere inside Bones, and Jim doesn’t want to pry too much but he’s pretty sure it’s more than the divorce that he never talks about. Jim understands not wanting to talk about the past, and he’s also starting to accept the importance of keeping on moving forward. He’s never been one to look backwards – that’s Bones specialty, judging by the dark looks he gets on his face sometimes, like he’s reminiscing about something deeply traumatic – but he knows he’s been standing still for a long time. So now he’s all about looking boldly towards the future. 

It helps that the inner pain he’s been carrying for his soulmate has pretty much seeped away. He can still feel it sometimes, but it’s hardly noticeable anymore. And it makes Jim feel happy, knowing that his soulmate is obviously healing emotionally. It makes him wish, too, that this sharing worked with things other than pain. Happiness would be a good start. Trust and safety. Even maybe just a light sharing of pleasure. 

If that could be shared through this soulbond he has with whoever, they’d spend their days pretty happy. Jim might have turned over a new leaf when it comes to applying himself, but there’s a big cadet class out there, and plenty of women and men who find him attractive enough to spend a night or two together, and nothing more. Which is exactly what Jim wants, and maybe needs. So Jim does pretty well for himself, and when he’s bored he nags Bones to date, too. 

Bones refuses, and Jim understands that he’s still grieving for the loss of his marriage. He wonders if Bones had been married to his soulmate, but can’t bring himself to ask. It’s an oddly personal thing, especially when not everyone has one, and he doesn’t want to answer any questions about his own. He feels a weird protectiveness over his soulmate, this person he’s never met. They belong to him, even if they drive him crazy sometimes with the occasional neck cramp or sore back, and he just wishes they’d get a more ergonomic chair or something, because it’s hard enough to study Vulcan by-laws as it is, without having to stretch your neck, or give Bones longing looks until he uses those doctor fingers of his to work out the kinks. He always seems to know exactly where to press, which makes soothing the pain so much quicker and easier. 

When he’s ready to date, Jim thinks Bones will be a lady killer. Or a guy killer. He doesn’t exactly know Bones’s preferences, but either way, he sees the looks thrown at the man who Jim’s pretty sure is the best friend he’s ever had in his life. He looks at Bones and sees how handsome he is, but he knows that Bones would curl away from the compliment if he ever mentioned it. Whoever Bones ends up with is damn lucky, if only because they’ll have those clever hands at their disposal whenever they want. 

Despite the not dating, Bones occasionally accompanies Jim out to bars. Jim’s pretty sure it’s only because he’s sick of looking after Jim the morning after a night spent accidentally getting into fights – less and less because he picks them, and more and more because he stands up against bullies and gets in the way of their fists – and having to heal his wounds. Bones always keeps a regen or two in his pockets, so that way, Jim thinks, Bones can patch him up on the spot. 

And the best thing is that Bones always has his back. If Jim’s out there avoiding swinging fists, so is Bones. Mostly he’s trying to pull Jim away, but he throws a few punches too, and takes a few hits if their matching split lips and bruised knuckles are anything to go by. When Bones comes out with him, the black eyes and bloodied noses are healed fairly quickly, but the ache in his knuckles seems to last for days. Jim thinks that maybe he punches a bit harder when he’s got to keep Bones safe too. He thinks about asking Bones to magic the ache away, but it acts like a warning to head to the library rather than the bar for a few nights, and since Bones seems to approve of that behaviour, Jim doubts he’ll take away the reminder. 

On the nights when he goes out alone, and stumbles into a fight, he heads to Bones to be patched up. The first time, he ends up stretched shirtless on Bones’s bed while Bones applies regenerators to the bruises on Jim’s back. Bones is hunched over, wincing like he feels every bit of Jim’s pain, as he scolds and exclaims that he can see a perfect imprint of size twelve boots on Jim’s ribs. Jim has no real explanation, so doesn’t give one. When he gets up, he pats Bones on the back and sees Bones wince again. 

The next day over breakfast, Bones asks Jim to comm him when he needs patching up. Jim raises an eyebrow in question – he doesn’t really see the difference since he’ll be dragging Bones out of bed anyway. But Bones turns his attention back to his meal, so Jim shrugs and agrees. 

It works even better. He comms Bones, and gets a terse response of  _ my room _ or  _ clinic  _ depending on where Bones is. Occasionally it means he sits and swings his feet over the edge of a biobed until Bones shows up looking grumpy and put upon. Sometimes when he lets himself into Bones’s room, the bathroom door stays locked for several minutes until Bones emerges, claiming he needed to shower to wake himself up enough to treat Jim. And Jim doesn’t begrudge the wait because he’s grateful that Bones is willing to expend the energy to fix him at all, when it’s mostly self inflicted. 

As time goes on and Jim settles down and, to be honest, gets a bit better at throwing punches and ducking them thanks to their hand-to-hand combat training, Bones has to patch him up less and less, meaning both of them are happier and a lot less tired. And it works well for everyone. Jim goes almost a month and a half without any pain more than sore shoulders, or eyestrain, or an upset stomach, and he’s pretty happy. 

Then one morning he wakes up with a headache from hell. It pounds in his brain, like there are a dozen Klingons wearing steel boots stomping as hard as they can to try and kick out his eyeballs from the inside. Jim can’t think of any reason for it – no drinking, no meds, plenty of appropriate food and water, no undue stress – so he assumes it must be his soulmate’s pain. And while he’s begrudging less and less the fact that he has to shoulder some of the burden, he has a whole bunch of important classes today, plus a paper to write. 

So he rolls out of bed, throws on some clothes, and goes to see Bones. He doesn’t bother to comm because looking at any sort of screen or shiny object right now is definitely not high on his list of priorities.

Bones has a single, because he’s an old man, and also as a perk of working pretty much full time at the clinic as well as studying. Jim has long ago taken to just letting himself in whenever he wants, so he keys in the code and steps inside. 

Bones is not in his bed. He’s not in his little kitchenette, or slumped on the couch, or at his desk where he often falls asleep studying, neck bent awkwardly to rest on his arms. Jim’s about to leave, to comm him and see if he’s in the cafeteria, when he hears retching from the bathroom. 

He finds Bones slouched over the toilet, throwing up. There’s a nine-tenths empty bottle of something foul smelling beside him, and Jim nudges it away with his toe before crouching down beside his friend. 

“I’ve seen you drunk, but never this hungover,” Jim says, unable to hide his surprise. He pauses, frowning. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you hungover at all, actually.”

Bones looks up at him with bloodshot eyes and tells him to fuck off. 

Jim doesn’t. He pushes the hair off Bones’s forehead and feels how clammy he is. He spots a hypospray on the floor, and wonders why Bones hasn’t taken it yet. 

He checks the cartridge – he’s well versed in anti-hangover hypos by now – and goes to press it into Bones’s neck, but Bones shoves his hand away. 

“Don’t deserve it,” he mumbles, then throws up again, and Jim is more sure than ever that Bones is his bestest best friend, because he wouldn’t do this for just anyone. He rubs Bones’s back and makes soothing noises. 

“Come on, Bones,” he says. “You’ll feel so much better.”

“That’s the point,” Bones snaps. He pushes himself away from the toilet and leans against the wall, closing his eyes. “You can go away.”

“You know I can’t,” Jim says, sliding down beside him. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“No.”

“So you’re not going to explain why you won’t take the cure that’s right there? Why you seem to want to torture yourself?”

“It’s personal,” Bones bites out, and Jim rolls his eyes. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Are we not friends? Whatever it is, I wish you’d spit it out, so I can get you to take the hypo without having to wrestle you to the ground. Because I’d rather not do that. I have a shit ton to do today and my head is throbbing like a son of a bitch and–”

Bones’s eyes crack open. He looks sad for a moment, and swears under his breath. Then he fumbles for the hypo. 

For a moment Jim thinks he’s going to press it against Jim’s skin, which wouldn’t be exactly unwelcome because his skull feels like it’s going to split in two. But Bones lifts the hypo to his own neck. His hand shakes, and Jim reaches out to steady it, then places his cool hand on the back of Bones’s neck. 

A funny feeling buzzes through him. It’s the weirdest thing, but for a brief moment, Jim thinks that if Bones didn’t have vomit at the corner of his mouth, he’d have leant in and kissed him. 

He pulls his hand back suddenly, confused and a little embarrassed. Bones furrows his brow at Jim, but Jim clambers to his feet and pulls Bones up. 

“You need to shower,” he says. “Because you smell like something died and fermented, then got eaten by something else, which then also died. And when you’re done, the meds will have kicked in and you can tell me what you’re trying to punish yourself for.”

Bones looks surprised, but Jim recognises the signs. He’s done that to himself more times than he can count, and he’d recognise it in everyone, especially his best friend. Who he’d just thought about kissing. 

Jim hurries from the bathroom before Bones can start to undress and confuse Jim even further. 

Because he’s never looked at Bones that way before. He’s never wanted to kiss him. Never wanted to run his hands over Bones’s body. Never wanted Bones’s hands to move from massaging his neck and slide down over his chest and then lower. 

Except maybe he has. Maybe he has and just hasn’t admitted it to himself. Because those mental images come so easily. Too easily. 

It doesn’t matter though. Jim can think about that, about kissing Bones, all he wants. But he’s sure that Bones wouldn’t welcome the attention. Jim tries to imagine what Bones would do if he walked back into the bathroom, stepped into the shower cubicle and pressed Bones up against the wall. He wonders what Bones would do if he kissed him and touched him and told him he loved him. 

He thinks Bones would be about as surprised as Jim is right now. Because he doesn’t know where these feelings, these thoughts, are coming from. 

He doesn’t think Bones would kiss him back. Bones has seen too much of the worst of him to want him as anything more than what they have already. And Bones deserves a hell of a lot better than that, considering what Jim knows he’s been through, and what he knows probably isn’t even the half of it. 

There’s also the soulmate issue. As much as Jim thinks having one is some unpleasant cosmic joke at his expense, he can’t help but wonder about when he’ll meet them, and what that means for his future. It’s one thing to fuck around with random cadets and civilians to pass the time, but there’s too much at risk to even consider using Bones in that way. Because the way his luck seems to go, he’d make a move on Bones just before meeting his soulmate, and end up with broken hearts all around. And Jim’s already felt his soulmate’s heart break once. He doesn’t want to feel that pain again, nor cause it in someone he cares about. 

Jim paces back and forth for a bit, until he realises his headache has slipped away while he’s been angsting over this new and unexpected honesty with himself. He can hear when the shower switches off, and he busies himself making coffee, in case Bones comes out shirtless and sticks a memory in Jim’s mind that he won’t be able to forget. 

But Bones comes out dressed from head to toe, and he takes the coffee Jim offers without a word. 

They sip in silence, then Bones clears his throat. 

“Sorry you had to see me like that,” he says. “And sorry about your headache.”

Jim rolls his eyes. “Don’t apologise for that. And the headache’s gone now anyway. Just...tell me what’s going on.”

Jim watches Bones’s eyes close, lashes dark against his skin. He bites his bottom lip, and Jim knows that as much as these feeling stirring inside him want to feel those teeth on his own lips, he is first and foremost Bones’s friend, and Bones is hurting. Jim can feel it like it’s his own pain, settling in his heart. 

“It’s my daughter’s birthday,” Bones says, and that’s new and interesting information for Jim. He had no idea Bones had a kid, and he feels a flash of hurt that Bones hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him. 

Bones looks up at him sharply. “I don’t talk about her,” he says, defensive and apologetic at the same time. “Because Jocelyn won’t let me see her. I...I went through a bad time. I found comfort in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. I wasn’t a good husband. But I was a good father. Jocelyn wanted to hurt me as much as possible. So she used the drinking against me. Took Jo away and made it so I can’t see her until she’s eighteen.”

“How old is she?” Jim asks softly. 

“Four,” Bones says. He stares at his hands, and Jim wants to reach out and grab them, to ground them both. Jim can’t imagine waiting fourteen years for anything. “I’ve always had the good parts of drinking. The relaxation, the mellowness, the high of it, and the void when you drink to drown your memories or your pain. But I’ve never had the bad parts. The morning after, the hangover. I’ve always cheated it. So I thought today, why not feel it for a change? Why not get what I deserve.”

“You don’t deserve that,” Jim says. “No one deserves pain.”

Bones gives Jim a sad look. Then he rubs his hand over his face. “I guess,” he agrees, but Jim doesn’t think he believes what he’s saying. “I should let you get to class.”

Jim tries to protest, but Bones waves him away, insisting he’s fine. He’s not, but there’s nothing Jim can do except squeeze his shoulder. 

As soon as he leaves Bones’s room, Jim makes a note of the date, so that next year, and the year after, and every year for the next fourteen, he can be there with Bones on this day. 

~~~ 

First year ends in a panic of finals, and merges into a summer of internships and additional classes for acceleration path cadets. As second year approaches, Jim asks Bones to room with him, and is surprised by the flat refusal. 

The hurt flares sharply in Jim’s chest, and Bones looks pained too, like he realises he’s been too harsh. But he doesn’t offer an explanation, and Jim just assumes that he doesn’t want to give up the luxury of his single. Jim can’t entirely blame him. 

Second year goes a lot like first, except that their course load is heavier and harder, Bones’s hours at the clinic grow longer, and Jim doesn’t go out quite as often. He tells himself it’s because he needs to study, but it’s not true. Instead there’s a growing realisation that he really doesn’t see Bones as just a buddy. 

He figures it out the day he discovers that all of the little annoying things Bones does are actually endearing to him. And he finds himself tracking Bones’s movements when they’re in the same room together. It’s painfully obvious to anyone who knows them, to the point that Jim finds people he hits on turn him down because they know he’s in love with someone else. 

Jim assumes Bones must notice. But if he does, Bones says nothing, and that’s answer enough for Jim. So he lets Bones live his life, with Jim as his best friend, and Jim tries to keep his feelings under wraps so that neither of them feel too uncomfortable.

Sometimes it makes his skin itch, though, and the old Jim Kirk flares inside him. Sometimes he goes out looking for a fight, because it’s better to take out his frustration on some asshole picking on a newbie cadet, or not taking no for an answer from some girl in a bar, than on himself or, worse, on Bones. 

At first, he doesn’t go to Bones to get patched up. He doesn’t want to bother him, especially when Bones is the root cause of what sends him out looking for trouble. But somehow Bones always knows. He’s at the clinic when Jim goes in after a particularly bad fight that leaves him with a dislocated elbow, even though he’s not supposed to be on shift. Or he’s sitting, waiting on Jim’s bed and making awkward small talk with Jim’s roommate, when there’s another broken nose to be fixed. Jim wonders what he’d do without Bones. 

There’s an underlying guilt that drives him, all revolving around his soulmate. He feels bad for the pain he’s inflicting on whoever they are, with these brawls and battles he keeps throwing himself into. He thinks that maybe his soulmate must hate him by now. And maybe that’s a good thing. 

Because surely being in love with Bones is a betrayal. Somewhere out there, Jim has a soulmate, someone he’s supposed to love and be with forever, and he’s stopped wondering about them. For years his interest has been mostly academic, vague curiosity and wonderment. And now he finds himself barely thinking about them at all. Because he doesn’t want his soulmate. He wants Bones. 

He wonders whether, when he finally meets his soulmate, he’ll fall out of love with Bones and in love with whoever they are. And he thinks of how he feels about Bones – how seeing him smile makes Jim’s world shine like the sun has cranked up its brightness just for him, how the briefest brush of shoulders or knees makes Jim’s skin hum, how he simply feels safer when he’s with Bones – and he thinks anything he might feel for his soulmate would pale in comparison. 

He thinks about whether that will disappoint his soulmate. Whether he’ll feel their heart break through the soulbond, like he’s felt their heart break before. Whether they’ll be able to love someone as much as Jim loves Bones. 

Maybe the fights, the black eyes, and bruises will all be too much for his soulmate, and they’ll be glad that he doesn’t want them. Relieved. And it’s shitty logic, but Jim sticks with it anyway, another excuse for the sort of behaviour that could eventually cost him everything he’s worked for. 

Jim walks into the cafeteria one day, late in the year, and knows instantly something’s wrong. He’s always had a sort of sixth sense when it comes to trouble, has always been able to tell when something’s up. And the fights over the past years have honed him to the point where he knows from the set of someone’s shoulders that there’s going to be a problem. 

He just never expected them to be Bones’s shoulders.

Bones is having a face off with a fourth year asshole that Jim’s had the displeasure of crossing paths with on more than one occasion. He doesn’t like Jim, and there’s no real reason why, which has made it all the more satisfying to wipe the smirk off his face when they’ve fought. 

Why he’s trying to loom over Bones, Jim doesn’t know, but he makes his way towards them. The guy is clearly trying to intimidate, but Bones is holding his own. Jim knows Bones can do that – he’s seen Bones face down his superiors at the clinic, seen him wrangle admirals who refused to sit still while he scanned them, listened to him argue with his xenobiology professors in the corridor and be proven right. 

As Jim gets closer, he can see that Bones looks furious. He can’t remember ever having seen Bones this angry before, and he tries to push through the crowd of people standing around watching. He needs to be by Bones’s side, where he belongs, to protect him. And he needs to know what’s gotten Bones so enraged.

Bones tries to walk away, but the guy blocks his way, and throws a punch. It hits Bones square on the nose, and Jim doesn’t see what happens next because his face explodes with pain. He doubles over, tears stinging his eyes, blood pouring down his shirt. A sharp burst of pain in his right knuckles follows and he clutches his hand to his chest.

He looks around, trying to find who punched him, but everyone is surging forward, and there’s no one there. No one around him. 

Jim looks for Bones next. His face is bloody, and his eyes are dark and furious and...scared. Which makes no sense, because the other guy is on the floor, and people are gathered around him, and campus security are forcing their way through the crowd. 

Bones walks over, staying out of arm's reach, and says, “I suppose we need to talk.” He looks defeated, even though he’s won the fight, and then he’s being pulled away by security. 

It isn’t until Bones is gone that realisation hits Jim hard enough that he can’t breathe for a moment. 

No one had punched him. And yet he was injured, and he felt pain. 

Just like Bones.  _ Exactly _ like Bones. 

Jim shoves a napkin into his nose to stem the bleeding and runs across campus. He lets himself into Bones’s room and waits. Because he needs to hear it from Bones before he can believe it. 

Before he can believe Bones is his soulmate. 

He thinks back over the past two years, to all of his injuries, to all of the times he’d thought it was a funny coincidence that Bones’s black eye looked just like his after a fight. To all of the times that he’d woken with a stiff neck when he knew Bones had fallen asleep studying. To all of the times Bones had kept him waiting to be fixed up. Jim thinks he was probably healing himself first, so Jim wouldn’t ever know. 

And that’s the thing. Bones knows. For how long, Jim isn’t sure, but he knows, and he’s never told. And that hurts. It flares behind his sternum, and he hopes Bones feels it. He feels a sick satisfaction at the thought, and it spurs him on to get up and punch the wall as hard as he can, splitting his knuckles. Then he kicks a table leg over and over until it starts to buckle and his toes feel like they’re broken. And then, just for good measure, he punches himself in the face. It’s oddly satisfying.

When Bones storms in, Jim is aching with a smirk fixed on his face, just because he knows it’ll rile Bones up. 

“You’re an asshole,” Bones explodes. “I was being read the riot act – by Pike, of all people, and then my hand feels like I’d hit it with a sledgehammer. And I couldn’t make a fucking peep.”

“You deserved it,” Jim says, folding his arms across his chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?” Bones stares back at him evenly, playing dumb. 

“Do I have to be the one to say it? That you’re my soulmate. That I’m yours. That we’re…”

“Friends,” Bones says. His voice is strained. “We’re friends, Jim. It doesn’t matter that there’s some bond between us. I know you don’t want–”

Jim jumps to his feet, ignoring the throbbing in his toes. “Don’t you dare say I don’t want you,” he snaps. 

He stalks over to Bones and pushes a finger into his chest, hard enough to bruise. He can feel the pain blossom below his collarbone, and he pushes harder, leans into the pain. 

“If you think I don’t want you, you’re an idiot. And if you’ve known this whole time, without saying a word, then you’ve stolen a hell of a lot of time from the both of us. Time when we could have been…” Jim trails off, noticing how close they’re standing together. He hesitates, then spreads his hand across Bones’s chest, fingers splayed. 

“It took me awhile to figure it out,” Bones says quietly. “And then I only suspected. I didn’t know for sure. It was just a coincidence that I’d wake up with a black eye, and then half an hour later you’d comm me and show up with the same injury. It wasn’t until...Jo’s birthday. That’s when I knew. You could feel my hangover, and I just wanted to sink into the pain, but I couldn’t let you share that. It wasn’t yours, and you didn’t deserve it.” 

“If I’d known it was you, I’d have happily taken the pain,” Jim says. He clenches his hand in Bones’s shirt. “Bones, you should have said something.”

“I’m a fuck up,” Bones says. “Jocelyn never wanted me. Not really. We were pushed into it. She doesn’t have a soulmate, and I...you never gave me much trouble, so I didn’t really think anything of it. And then when she figured it out...when the cuts and bruises started to appear as she watched, I think she felt betrayed.”

Jim feels sick. He thinks about how that’s his fault. Guilt twists in him like a knife. And a question springs to his lips without thinking. 

“When you were…” he pauses to do some quick mental arithmetic. “26. What happened?”   

Bones’s face clouds over and he glances away. He’s silent for a long moment, long enough that Jim doesn’t think he’s going to answer. 

“My father died,” he says. It sounds simple, but Jim knows there’s a story there, one that cuts Bones deeply. There’s a familiar burst of pain inside Jim’s chest that he knows now belongs to Bones, and he wonders if Bones will ever explain. 

“I’m sorry,” Jim says, and hopes it encompasses everything. 

Bones shrugs, and the movement causes Jim’s hand, still clenched in his shirt, to rise and fall. “I try not to think about it. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my suspicions.”

Jim takes a step closer. “Bones,” he says. “I am really fucking mad at you right now. We will probably have screaming arguments about this for months to come. But there’s something I want to do. Something I’ve been thinking about for a stupidly long time.”

He crowds even closer, and Bones lifts his chin. They stare at each other, and there’s a warning in Bones’s eyes, but also a challenge. 

Jim has never bothered to listen to warnings that tell him what he doesn’t want to hear. And he never walks away from a good challenge. So he kisses Bones. He presses his lips to the corner of Bones’s mouth, and when Bones doesn’t push him away, kisses him properly. 

It takes two heartbeats for Bones’s mouth to open to him, and then their hands grab at each other, pulling even closer. 

When oxygen starts becoming a problem, Jim steps back, releasing Bones’s shirt. He puts space between them. 

“You can take the next step,” he says, voice raw.

And Bones does, closing the distance, wrapping Jim first into a tight hug, and then kissing him back. Bones’s lips are warm and compliant and Jim can’t resist pressing his teeth against them. He feels a surge of pain across his own bottom lip and gasps, stepping back. 

“This isn’t going to be easy,” Bones says, matter of fact, reaching out to rub his thumb along Jim’s lip, exactly where the pain is. It dawns on Jim that of course Bones had always known exactly where he was hurting, and how to treat it, when he acutely felt the pain himself. 

“Honestly, Bones? Nothing in my life ever is. So I didn’t expect this to be either. But at least now I won’t wake you up in the middle of the night. With pain I mean. Maybe with something different.”

He gives Bones a small smirk, and gets an eye roll in return. Then Bones fishes a couple of regens out of his pocket. 

“I had to take to carrying these with me all the time,” he grumbles, slapping one on Jim’s face, then one on himself. He nudges Jim towards the couch, sitting Jim at one end and himself at the other. He instructs Jim not to move until the healing process is complete. 

It’s an order Jim finds difficult to follow. Now that he’s touched Bones, his fingers itch to do it again. Bones must feel the same, because his hand slides across the space between them, seeking Jim’s. 

Jim twines their fingers together, even though their hands are both bruised. 

“Did you get into trouble with Pike?” 

Bones laughs. “No. He knew I hit that guy in self defense. Asked if I wanted to press charges, which I didn’t. Then he lectured me for a bit until you, what, punched yourself in the face? Idiot. He watched my cheek split open with an odd look on his face. Said it looked like I had plenty to deal with as it was, and I could come back if I changed my mind about telling him what that goon said.”

“What did he say?”

Bones shifts uncomfortably. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Bones.”

He looks across at Jim. “He...insinuated that your presence at the Academy, and your high grades – and the fact that by some miracle you haven’t been expelled – are because you’ve been...servicing the needs of Pike and all of your professors.”

“All of them?” Jim snorts. “At least the guy thinks highly of my stamina. It’s not true,” he adds hastily. 

“I know that,” Bones says hotly. “Do you think I’d defend your honour if I didn’t?”

Jim squeezes Bones’s hand lightly. “Yeah,” he says. “I think you would.”

They sit in silence for a moment. “Do you think Pike knows?”

Bones shrugs. “He was a bit pointed when he dismissed me. Said I should send his regards to you. So...probably.”

Jim nods. He kind of likes that someone knows what he is to Bones. What Bones is to him. Even if it’s something they’re still figuring out. 

They lapse into silence again. 

“Bones?” Jim asks. 

“Yes, Jim?”

“How long until we’re healed?”

Bones looks at him. “You and I both know you’re still in pain,” he says. “But I can fix that if you want?” He gets a look that Jim has come to interpret as ‘I’m going to get a hypospray’, and Jim’s eyes grow wide.. 

“No, no, no. Just eager to get these off and…” he gives Bones a meaningful look. 

Bones flushes, and it makes Jim grin wide enough to make his cheeks ache. 

“Stop that,” Bones orders, using his doctor voice. But there’s a hint of something there too, a promise. 

Jim stops smiling, and gives Bones a serious look.

“I’m still mad at you.”

“I know.”

“I’m probably gonna punch myself in the face again.”

“I know that too.”

“Bones?”

Bones gives an exasperated sigh. “Yes, Jim?”

“I’m glad it’s you.”

Bones squeezes his hand. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

  



End file.
